2013 Frankenfood Carving Contest

Greetings, plants and people! This is Frank N. Foode™ with a special announcement. Leaves are turning colors and falling from the trees. The weather is changing, and demonstrations are happening both near and far with people talking about genetically engineered foods as if they were scary monsters out to get them. Why does this always seem to happen around Halloween? Well we have our own way of sending these images off with a seasonal celebration of scary imagery: It is time for our 4th annual Frankenfood Carving and Costume Contest! Get that agrobacteria ready – it’s time to make some monsters and win fabulous prizes and have fun at the same time!

Here are the rules:

This contest is open to everyone – you need not have ever commented on the blog before the day you enter in the contest. But, you will need to register for the blog to enter, and have a photo attached to your profile. You can upload one, or use Gravatar.

Carve any fruit, vegetable, grain, or heck, algae into the scariest creature imaginable. While you may carve the classic pumpkin, extra points will be awarded for creative use of alternatives. Feel free to do a little genetic engineering and splice different plants together.

OR – carve yourself a killer food, plant, or genetics-based costume. Whichever you choose – if you can include a reference to recent news, genes, or something we’ve talked about on the blog, that will certainly set you above the rest! Think: can you give a pumpkin a tumor?

To give you time to upload a picture from Halloween, the contest is open until November 4th, at midnight Pacific time in the US.

The Biofortified Blog’s Editors will decide on a winner and announce it within the next week.

Prizes

This year we have two categories you can enter.Sorry, veggies and Frank not included!Mad Scientists: For the best costume or carving, here is what you will win: An embroidered blog tote bag, a book from our prize page, and a hand-turned fancy wood pen (worth about $60) donated by one of our readers. (Pictures coming) We totally recommend The Fruit Hunters, but we’ve got a lot of great books we’d love to hand out!Young Dr. Frank N. Foode (new!): We’ve had some entries from creative kids before, but now we want to give them their own category and prizes to win. The top carving or costume gets a set of veggie erasers and our last Norman Borlaug coin! Make sure to get your parents’ permission and have them enter for you! Just tell us in your entry if this is a Young Dr. Frank N. Foode entry.
Now as always, if we get a lot of good entries, we may add more fabulous prizes to the mix to make it more interesting.
So with that, good luck and have fun this Halloween, everyone! Don’t forget this chance to be on our eternal wall of Glory!